Our six week cycle is broken up as following:
1. Transfers - a week of receiving and sending home missionaries and helping missionaries find their new homes and new companions.
2. Week of the three P's: Prayer, Planning, Preparation - this is a week of determining what training needs to happen over the next few weeks and preparing for interviews.
3 & 4. Zone Conferences - We have six zones in our mission. We meet as a single zone, two zones or three zones together. Depending on the message and what our goal is we'll determine whether to have two, three or six conferences.
5 & 6. These two weeks are pretty well dedicated to interviewing all the missionaries. We may sneak a few into week 4 depending on the number of zone conferences and the number of venues where we'll be interviewing. This week we will also make decisions about what happens the next week where we start over again with transfers.
This week was the week of the three P's. We met with our mission leadership council (MLC) and discussed items they felt were important, where they see training opportunities. This is a great group! These are the assistants, the zone leaders and the sister training leaders. We learn much from them.
We used the afternoon of one day to visit a school created by the Korean government for children of families who are refugees from North Korea. We have set up with an English teacher there for two of our local missionaries to visit once a week and have conversation with a class. The current class has eight students 14-19 years of age. In the class today, the youth prepared a small presentation on traditional or favorite Korean foods. Kimchi was the most loved, but there were many other good items. If they had challenges saying a word, they were to talk to their advisor; however, they always went first to their teacher. The missionaries would then ask questions in English such as, "what is included in this soup?" or " what items are in Kimchi?". It was fun to watch them interact.
The teacher said the first day (this is the third) the students were very reserved. However, now they are more comfortable and enjoying their two American visitors. It was a great day with them.
We also had the opportunity to attend two baptisms this weekend. We wanted to attend a third, but darn, we can't be in two places at once. We try hard to do so, but no luck yet. The missionaries and a number of youth sang. They always have a great sound.
One day during contemplations Pres. Turner had to have a meal break. Lunch of champions! Ramen, rice, kimchi. It doesn't take much to please ...
Terri needed a Spring "break" so we found the local flower shop. We are preparing the roof for our spring study time and for a quiet get away place. Right now, one of the bathrooms is the greenhouse with the large window with lots of morning sun. The egg crate is for her budding spider plants. She has seeds from her mom she is anxious to have bud in her bigger pots.
Occasionally, our Korean missionaries have to do some reserve military training for a day. They shed their missionary uniform and put on the camo to serve their country. These two are great missionaries.
Finally, on the way home from meetings today, we found these three sandwiched on a motor scooter. They were a bit reckless. I hope they don't have any problems.
We are excited for this upcoming week. We get to put on jeans and help some missionaries move to new apartments, then three days of zone conferences with about half of our now 115 missionaries. We are excited to be with them. They are doing so well. We are constantly amazed! Not as much in this week to share, but we promise we were pretty darn busy! The missionaries were too!
